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This Year’s Nebula Awards Nominations

Of all people in the world, I think I’m allowed to use the official SFWA press release for this directly:

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is proud to announce the nominees for the 2011 Nebula Awards (presented 2012), the nominees for the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the nominees for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book.

The winners will be announced at SFWA’s 47th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend, to be held Thursday through Sunday, May 17 to May 20, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, near Reagan National Airport. As announced earlier this year, Connie Willis will be the recipient of the 2011 Damon Knight Grand Master Award for her lifetime contributions and achievements in the field. Walter Jon Williams will preside as toastmaster, with Astronaut Michael Fincke as keynote speaker. More information on the Nebula Awards Weekend can be found at: http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/nebula-weekend/

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of SFWA. Voting will open to SFWA Active members on March 1, 2012, and close on March 30, 2012. More information about voting can be found at: http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/how-to-vote/

22 thoughts on “This Year’s Nebula Awards Nominations”

There is some very fine writing here and mind-blowing originality, but the nominees again show a distinct trend towards fantasy and away from SF. Since I am a dedicated SF fan , what can be done to increase the output of MY favorite subgenre, other than be sure to buy the books, advice which my overloaded shelves and extensive Kindle inventory will attest that I follow assiduously.

Alternatively, A Dance with Dragons might not have been indisputably one of the 5 best novels this year. Just throwing that out there.

On a dearth of SF: Among Others was a contemporary fantasy novel about *reading* sf. :) And Embassytown was a year’s worth of SF ideas in one novel. Of the 6 novellas, at least 5 are SF. (I haven’t read “The Ice Owl” yet.)

Wow, I think this is the first year I’ve only read one of the Novel Noms (Jack McDevitt’s “FIrebird”)*. Now, while I LOVE McDevitt’s work, this wasn’t his best. His series tend to peter out as he’s getting tired of them instead of ending on a high note. Oh, well, maybe he’ll get excited about a new series and we can get good, classic McDevitt Science Fiction again (this post was in no way paid for by Mr. McDevitt ;) ).

*Hey, what do you expect from me? I’m in graduate school for math and stats which means I take 3 classes AND teach AND run my own business on the side.

Part of it’s probably just the massive gravity of Neil Gaiman’s popularity, combined with the massive gravity of Doctor Who Fandom (2 super giants in the SF/F community, to be sure) but also there wasn’t much in the way of SF/F on TV or in theaters this year that didn’t also get a nod. Sure, we could argue Game of Thrones deserves some recognition, but which episode really stood out from the other 11 (And I loved GoT but season 1 had one of the tightest styles in a TV series I’ve ever seen. It was like a 12 hour feature film. Hard to pick one segment and say this is the best.)

“Apparently the nominating committee has never heard of George RR Martin.”

Here’s how the ballot is determined:
“From March 1, 2012, to March 30, 2012, 11:59pm PDT, SFWA Active members may vote on the final ballot for the 2011 Nebula Awards (presented 2012), the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book.” http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/how-to-vote/

Somebody was handing out free copies of “Mechanique” at Renovation, and my husband snagged one. I picked it up and started reading it last fall, and despite thinking it was one of the weirdest books I’d read in a long time, couldn’t put it down. It’s a post-apocalyptic type story, and hangs on the technical work of a mechanical genius, but despite that is much more fantasy than science fiction. Four days later, I still couldn’t tell my husband whether I’d liked it or not, but I also couldn’t quit thinking about it or talking about it. ;) I’d never heard of the author before, but she’s now on my list.

Walton’s “Among Others” was nowhere near as surreal, but was a solidly written and emotionally literate fantasy story set in modern south Wales. It has no meaningful overlap with any extruded fantasy product. :-) I’ve read it twice through, and sections of it more than that. Excellent book. (I think I picked it up on Scalzi’s recommendation in the first place, come to think of it — if so, thanks for the tipoff, John!)

I haven’t read the other novels, although Mieville’s “Embassytown” is on my “to be read” shelf. I grab anything by China Mieville when it comes out; IMHO he’s not just one of the best living SF writers, but one of the best living writers period. I’ve read other books by Jack McDevitt, was impressed with “Deep Six”, but not as fond of other books. I’ll get around to Firebird eventually, and the other nominees.

I just finished Firebird last night (actually in the wee hours of the morning). It was quite good.. There is nothing better than sci-fi that presents new and novel ideas/situations that you feel in your gut that future humans will be dealing with (assuming we last the next 50 years, that is).

Hmm, any chance the Doctor Who “The Doctor’s Wife” got a nod because it was written by Neil Gaiman? It was a good episode and all, but was it the best TV had to offer? I’m not so sure of that.

I’m not so sure there actually was much better in what has been (to be blunt) a pretty shitty year for genre television. Game of Thrones, overall, was pretty impressive but the “sexposition” and seriously uneven writing made the show merely very very good when it should have been great.

The Bradbury nomination that really was a “bitch, please…” moment for me was Midnight in Paris. I’m more of a Woody Allen fan than most nowadays, I suspect, but at 90 minutes the film outstayed its welcome by at least an hour. To put it politely, I think the film (and it’s script in particular) have been grossly over-rated.

These are the times when I feel it most appropriate to express myself through music. Big-time thanks to The Host for the phone call of last Thursday. Big-time thank you to all SFWA members who liked my novelette, “Ray of Light,” enough to give it their nod of approval during the initial nomination process. It’s a massive honor to be sharing that ballot with such a terrific and hard-working group of writers. See my blog post on the matter, for further details. Suffice to say, I am psyched. =^)

Well, The Walking Dead is pretty darned good, although I’m not sure either season aired at the right time to qualify for the award.

I think I’ll just say The Walking Dead really better lift it’s game a loooong way in season 2.5 or I’m done. Adaptation isn’t transcription and I don’t think TWD has ever really figured out a way to gracefully transpose Kirkman’s stop-and-go storytelling (which, for the most part, works splendidly on the page) to television.

All that said, while deeply flawed (IMO & YMMV, of course) it isn’t flat out True Blood-level “OMFG, was this crap written by meth-heads with ADHD?” bad. It’s a success for AMC, and more ambitious genre programming aimed squarely at grown-up isn’t a bad thing, even if I don’t always think the results stick the landing.

Of course the die is cast for Nebula, but Game of Thrones can still be nominated for Hugo, and the whole season could potentially be nominated for best dramatic presentation long form, since it is essentially an adaptation of a single novel and more of a cohesive whole than most TV series, in which case one wouldn’t need to pick a particular episode.

This might be an advantage for GoT since it sounds like short form is all but already awarded in the minds of the Hugo voters and I haven’t even seen the Who episode in question yet.

I don’t wish to seem impertinent, but given that our host has shown that he disdains the use of “A New Hope” (the retrospective retitling of Star Wars after the release of The Empire Strikes Back), I would hope that he recognizes that the term “Reagan National Airport” should be similarly disdained, and for analogous reasons – even though in Virginia (of course) you’ll see road signs using this form, and even though the Washington Post deemed it an acceptable short form for “Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport” (the House-Senate compromise in February 1998; the bill passed by the Gingrich-led House had deleted the “Washington,” whereas the Senate bill retained it). Recall that the renaming was pushed through by a Republican-controlled legislature – as an 87th-birthday present for Ronnie – at the moment of Bill Clinton’s lowest ebb (that is, within weeks of the initial Monica Lewinsky revelations) such that he’d have been unable to successfully veto it.

My point is that legitimizing this sort of thing is an inseparable element of what has driven our nation to its current state of divisiveness. (Here in the DC area, one hears the airport called “Reagan” by some and “National” by others, depending on their politics. Likewise, the established all-news radio station religiously uses “Reagan National” in its weather reports every 10 minutes around the clock, whereas the new competitor station – thank god – avoids it in weather reports and uses “National Airport” in news stories.)